Abstract

The thesis examines the migration decision-making and everyday experiences of younghighly skilled professional migrants through the case study of German migration to theUK. It develops a framework combining the twin notions of transnational urbanism andtranslocal subjectivities, allowing a strong focus on migrants’ subjective experiences,perceptions and emotionalities of mobility, while acknowledging the centrality ofspaces and places for them. The geographical setting of the case study further serves toaccentuate the relatively small-scale disruption occurring during the migration process,and the subjectivities connected to this.

Data was collected in the UK (mainly London) during thirteen months of fieldwork,using participant observation, in-depth interviews and expert interviews. The researchreveals a previously unacknowledged high ambivalence and diversity of this migrantgroup. Young German highly skilled migrants display various mobility and migrationpatterns with regard to the translocal connections they maintain, the emotionalimportance they attach to these connections, and their previous internal andinternational migration history. Three mobility types emerge from this: ‘bi-local’,‘multi-local’ and ‘settled’ migrants. The close translocal connections practiced bymigrants can lead to conflict, particularly for bi-local migrants, as judging of themigration project can occur by friends and families; meaning the spatial and emotionalproximity between the migrants and their social network can be both positive andnegative. The expectations towards the UK are also highly complex, and stronglyinfluence micro-scale personal geographies. Lastly, the diversity of migration projectsleads to widely varying attitudes towards fellow German migrants, as well as tensionsand potentially conflicts within German social spaces. Overall, a strong and pervasiveambivalence about the migration experience emerges, which is experienced differentlyby the three migrant groups and the geographical proximity between Germany and theUK plays a large role in this.

This thesis adds empirical and analytical insight to the academic debate regarding youngprofessional migrants within the EU, and German contemporary migration in particular.Theoretically, it contributes to the discussion around lifestyle migration and middlingtransnationalism, and it enhances the practical use of the concept ‘emotionalgeographies’ for migration studies.